What was the first production car to feature a touchscreen?

The 1986 Buick Riviera was the first production car widely credited with featuring a touchscreen.

Its dashboard included Buick’s Graphic Control Center, a nine-inch monochrome cathode-ray-tube display operated by touching labeled areas on the screen. The system combined functions that had traditionally used separate controls, including the radio, heater, air conditioning, trip computer, vehicle diagnostics, and maintenance information.

The technology was developed by General Motors’ Delco Electronics division and was remarkably advanced for the mid-1980s. It was not a modern color infotainment system: the display was small, green-on-black, and used simple graphics. Nevertheless, it provided a genuine touchscreen interface integrated into a production automobile.

The Riviera’s system was innovative but unpopular and sometimes unreliable. Drivers found the computer controls distracting, and failures could disable important climate or stereo functions. The technology later appeared in the Buick Reatta and related GM applications before disappearing from mainstream cars for years. The 1985 model year is sometimes mentioned because limited experimental installations existed, but 1986 is the standard production-car milestone.